[gentoo-dev] More info than DESCRIPTION

[gentoo-dev] More info than DESCRIPTION

[Mike Frysinger]

sometimes its nice to see what a package does ... and i mean more than a 
1-liner ... for example the way rpm stores a large description in itself ...

i like having the 1-liner short description, dont get me wrong ... i dont want 
to see that change ... but what if we were to add support for a large 
description/explanation for ppl who are not familiar with it ...

could be handled in a couple of ways:
1. a package you would emerge that would have a large database of descriptions 
... not very good idea due to updating 1 package means a whole new d/l ...
2. a package that would query a remote gentoo server via http or something
3. another file for all packages to be added to cvs ... say 'Info' or 'About' 
or something similar ... i would rather not see it go into the ebuild ;)

<[Eazy|E]> is there a way to get an info about the package, the info like the 
freshmeat.net gives out ?
<[Eazy|E]> I liked the way rpm's had info stored about the package, so one who 
does not know the package can get an overview of the package with the text 
w/o checking the homepage etc
<[Eazy|E]> since qpkg can query the packages, it could be used also for giving 
more info about the package, like -i, maybe just another flag that will spit 
out more text etc.

thoughts/etc... ?
-mike

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Re: [gentoo-dev] More info than DESCRIPTION

[Thomas de Grenier de Latour]

Oops, I've made a personal reply... Sorry Mike.

On Thu, 19 Jun 2003 19:26:28 -0400
Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org> wrote:

> what if we were to add support for a large description/explanation for
> ppl who are not familiar with it ...
<snip>
> thoughts/etc... ?

This has already been discussed, but I don't remember if this led to a
consensus:
http://news.gmane.org/onethread.php?group=gmane.linux.gentoo.devel&root=%3C200305222012.06989.vadim_t%40teleline.es%3E

Thomas.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] More info than DESCRIPTION

[Alastair Tse]

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On Fri, 2003-06-20 at 00:26, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> could be handled in a couple of ways:
> 1. a package you would emerge that would have a large database of descriptions 
> ... not very good idea due to updating 1 package means a whole new d/l ...
> 2. a package that would query a remote gentoo server via http or something
> 3. another file for all packages to be added to cvs ... say 'Info' or 'About' 
> or something similar ... i would rather not see it go into the ebuild ;)
> 
> <[Eazy|E]> is there a way to get an info about the package, the info like the 
> freshmeat.net gives out ?

We had this discussion on gentoo-dev exactly a month ago, but as far as
I know it didn't come to anything conclusive. The messages are in marc,
although it is not the world's best mailing list archive, you can get
the gist of the discussion:

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=gentoo-dev&w=2&r=1&s=horrible+package+descriptions&q=b

I believe Seemant was suggesting some integration with freshmeat's
database using something called pdsst (?). We just need some mapping
from gentoo package name to freshmeat package name, and then some way to
fill in the void. Although all talk no code makes my point rather
ineffective. So I'll shut up :)

Cheers,
-- 
Alastair 'liquidx' Tse
 >> Gentoo Developer 
 >> http://www.liquidx.net/ | http://cvs.gentoo.org/~liquidx/
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Re: [gentoo-dev] More info than DESCRIPTION

[Mike Frysinger]

and you are correct ... that happened while i was away in europe, my mistake 
for the reposting ;)
-mike

On Thursday 19 June 2003 19:49, Thomas de Grenier de Latour wrote:
> Oops, I've made a personal reply... Sorry Mike.
>
> On Thu, 19 Jun 2003 19:26:28 -0400
>
> Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > what if we were to add support for a large description/explanation for
> > ppl who are not familiar with it ...
>
> <snip>
>
> > thoughts/etc... ?
>
> This has already been discussed, but I don't remember if this led to a
> consensus:
> http://news.gmane.org/onethread.php?group=gmane.linux.gentoo.devel&root=%3C
>200305222012.06989.vadim_t%40teleline.es%3E
>
> Thomas.
>
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

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Re: [gentoo-dev] More info than DESCRIPTION

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Friday 20 June 2003 01:49, Alastair Tse wrote:
> We had this discussion on gentoo-dev exactly a month ago, but as far as
> I know it didn't come to anything conclusive. The messages are in marc,
> although it is not the world's best mailing list archive, you can get
> the gist of the discussion:
>
> http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=gentoo-dev&w=2&r=1&s=horrible+package+descr
>iptions&q=b
>
> I believe Seemant was suggesting some integration with freshmeat's
> database using something called pdsst (?). We just need some mapping
> from gentoo package name to freshmeat package name, and then some way to
> fill in the void. Although all talk no code makes my point rather
> ineffective. So I'll shut up :)
>

The possibility of long descriptions was added to the proposed metadata 
format, which also will contain the maintainers and herds of a package. Also 
the proposal moves the changelog to this metadata file. Unfortunately not 
many people seem interested in it.

Paul

ps. The proposal is on http://cvs.gentoo.org/~pauldv/metadata.html

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Researcher
Mail: pauldv@cs.kun.nl
Homepage: http://www.cs.kun.nl/~pauldv

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